No results returned
by planet p
Summary: AU; Miss Parker is waiting for a lead on Jarod.


**No results returned** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

Written 30 September, 2009

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**He'd never really had an ear for music, and his hearing wasn't all that fantastic beside. As a boy, when he'd liked the music that they played over the radio, he'd remembered little pieces of the songs, and he'd string them together in a song, and he'd think how wonderful it was to know one, _whole_ song.**

**The parts he liked best of all, were the happy parts; the parts which gave you hope. And he liked Mae West. His favourite line was from a song from the eighties which he didn't remember the name of. _Take my hand; we'll make it, I swear._**

**It was when he turned seven, maybe, when he first saw the girl with the little green jumper. She liked to wear that little green old thing wherever, it didn't matter the weather; she never got embarrassed.**

**The first time he ever saw her, he was in the shed. It was dark in that shed, the sunlight from outside was so _bright_; it was like he'd walked into a room full of midnight, on a night when the moon had hidden away. He blinked a couple of times quickly, the sun's rays hot on the back of his shirt, but the dust that had risen at his shoes had made it up to his eyes and they hurt, making him blink harder, and a wet mist appear in his vision.**

**The first piece of Aeria's story started with that thin, green string of wool, swaying in the breeze, and attached to a roll of fencing, just flitting back and forth, and back again.**

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**The first tentative signs were a thin, sun-worn strand of green wool, beaten and battered by wind and dirt, possibly even by rain. Whole, the green wool belonged to a green jumper, worn by a ragged little girl made of bones.**

**The forensics team came next, after the detectives from the department, and they slowly uncovered that little, old body with no name, and just a few, spare strands of that green jumper, woven in with the bones of her rib cage, fastened around a rib, or two, and around one wrist bone, like a simple green bracelet, or protective talisman.**

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**His mother and father argued terribly sometimes, not to say that the arguments were started by his mother, sometimes they were started by his father, at other times his mother, but Aeria and he seldom argued, a fact which pleased him greatly; sometimes, even, he believed that he was in love with her the way a boy got in love with a girl he knew he wanted to marry, when they were both old enough, and maybe he was.**

**But Aeria was dead. She didn't think of him that way, in any case.**

**The girls at his school thought he was strange; Aeria, for her part, _knew_ that he was strange, and didn't _care_.**

**From that first moment of knowing, of feeling the blunt force of the heavy object against Aeria's skull – which was his skull, when he was Aeria – he pledged to find her, and help her. She needed his help, of course, or else, why would she have come to him? She needed his help, and he loved her, so he coulddo _nothing_ but _help_ her.**

**As he grew older, he would often lie in bed and gaze up at his bedroom ceiling, and wonder if by help, his task was really to find her _killer_, to bring her killer to _justice_.**

**Back in those days, he'd believe in justness and rightness, of course. He'd believed in justice, and the justice system; justice would be served, the balance would be maintained, everything would be fine, wouldn't it?**

**When he was ten, walking home one afternoon from school, he met a girl on the road. She wasn't doing anything especial, just standing, and he kept walking toward her, he didn't slow or anything, even though he'd seen her and all, plain as day. He wasn't embarrassed, and he wasn't frightened that she'd say that he did something to her, or looked at her in a way that he shouldn't have, or _touched_ her, so he kept walking.**

**He'd never touch a girl in a bad way, he was sure; he'd never touch anyone in a bad way, for that matter. If he knew that, then the girl would know it too; she'd look at him, and she'd just know it.**

**As he drew nearer the girl, the prickly, old shoelaces on his school shoes working themselves undone and under the soles of his shoes, he kept his eyes on the girl, wond'rin' if she was waiting for some big, old car to come pick her up, to come steaming along that road in a trail of dust and sand, and pull up right there beside her, and hurl open that door there across from the driver, just for her.**

**If it did, if that big, old car came, he'd have to turn his face away to stop from getting himself a face full of gritty dust and sand, he knew. Beside him, the wheat moved in the wind; the same wind that'd blow that dust and sand right up off that road and into his face, and set him coughing all the way home, and brushing his clothes down with sweaty hands that'd probably only smudge that dust and sand into grubby marks on his washed-yesterday school clothes.**

**But that big, old car just stayed away, but the girl kept lookin' for the car, and, after a time, even he started to look for it too.**

**He was fairly close to the girl, who he saw, now, wasn't so much a girl as a young woman, when two things happened at almost the same time: he pitched right over his shoe laces, falling forward heavily, given extra momentum by the weight of his school bag, and a patch of clouds that had to be the _only_ patch in the sky, moved to cover the sun. But on the young woman's face, the sun was as bright as ever, just as if the clouds hadn't shifted at all.**

**He fell on the ground hard, smacking his cheek bone on a rock and cutting it open enough to let blood, and broke the shoelace on his right shoe. When he clambered to his feet, seconds later, she was gone.**

**That evening, as he was washing up in the kitchen sink, he heard the sounds of the television from the lounge room, telling the Viewers At Home about the woman who'd been stabbed to death in her backyard, just out to hang her washing, and the water in the sink turned cold as ice, hurting his hands suddenly, all of its bubbles popped.**

**He reached over for the bottle of detergent, and saw that his hands had no colour left in them at all.**

**He'd always known Aeria was dead, but that night, he didn't dream again of the field of sunflowers where they'd be married; that night, he knew that he'd never be married.**

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Miss Parker closed the novel she'd been reading, and glanced up from her post in a chair beside Broots's cubicle and computer terminal.

On the monitor, the search was still running; no results returned.

She unfolded her legs and flung out a leg, kicking the bottom of the computer chair Broots was sitting in.

Broots immediately swivelled about in his chair and glanced steadily at her.

"Have you read this?" she asked, flashing him the front cover of the novel. "What happens in the end?"

"They get married," Broots replied, nodding to her first question.

Miss Parker gave a disbelieving laugh. "She's dead!"

Broots shrugged, and turned back to the computer screen with a smile.

Miss Parker suppressed a scowl and turned through the first couple of pages of the book in her hands: Take My Hand... Kurt McCarty... Copyright (c) 2004 Courtney McCarty... _For Lyle, My Borealis Millar._ This time, she didn't bother to suppress her scowl. She really didn't like that name!

She remembered that McCarty had dedicated her 2003 novel to someone named Lyle also.

"The dedication inside," she said, to Broots's back, "do you think it's the same Lyle as from her earlier novel?"

"I don't think so," Broots answered, without taking his gaze from the computer's screen. "Sarah doesn't think so, and Debbie believes everything she says, like it's the Hand of God, or something, I swear, so it must be true, because she's sure got Debbie under some powerful dark spell, that's for sure."

Miss Parker made a face at both Broots's referral to God, and to dark magic. "Debbie's Goth friend?" she asked.

"Point! You are correct!" Broots chimed sarcastically.

"Her name's Sarah? I was going with something like Sylvia, or Sibyl, from my sketchy recollections."

"Something like that," Broots replied. "I don't care to remember, in honesty. I'm no friend of her, and I'd rather Debbie wasn't, either."

"Silvie, in fact," Sydney's calm voice easily interrupted. "I believe she works at McDonald's."

Miss Parker held up the book she'd been reading for him to see and repeated her question. "Have you read this?"

"Oh yes."

"They don't _really_ get married in the end, do they?"

"They do."

A look of displeasure crossed Miss Parker's face, infused with confusion. "But she's dead!"

"My dear, I shan't wish to spoil the ending for you, hmm."

Miss Parker frowned, but Sydney had turned and walked away. She looked quickly at Broots, who was, now, also looking at her.

"He brings her back to life," Broots relayed in a low voice. "Has Sydney drunken something?"

Miss Parker's frown deepened, and worry darkened her eyes. "Don't be moronic!" she replied, before flipping open her book and turning to the page she'd earmarked. Sydney may well have been drinking, but she wasn't about to stab him in the back in front of Broots. She'd done that before, and it'd hurt both herself and Sydney, and benefited no one she wanted to benefit; she wasn't about to walk down that path again. Besides, Sydney might just have been tired – he _had_ gone for a coffee – or he might have been on some medication for something with a nasty name she'd instantly take a fierce, irrevocable hatred to the instant it was spoken aloud, or presented before her.

She was about to make some comment about her brother already being a moron to cheer Broots up, feeling bad for snapping at him as harshly as she had in her defence of Sydney, when she noticed Lyle standing a short distance away, watching the progress of Broots's search on the computer screen.

"Have you read this?" she snapped, smacking him with the book when he turned to glance at her.

"I don't think so," he said, frowning to read the cover.

"It's dedicated to you," she growled, and looked away from him, toward a poster on the wall across the room, which, had it been in plain English, would have read: _Safety at Work – What's It All About?_ Turning back to Broots, she made a face. "Did an illiterate write that poster?" she growled snappily.

Broots's eyes darted to the poster in question quickly, then, after a long moment, to her face. "It's SMS speak, you know?"

Miss Parker rolled her eyes in an angered, dismissive gesture, and glared at her brother.

"Periodically, I do not read McCarty." Sydney was back, coffees in hand. He passed a coffee each to Miss Parker and Broots, and frowned. "You see, I find I cannot stomach the likes of Hill, and, as the two are clearly affiliated, I'd never read anything of hers, if, indeed, she is even a she."

"You read Hill," Miss Parker pointed out, sipping her coffee, which she noticed, had only one sugar, rather than her usual three.

"Purely out of necessity, Parker, not out of enjoyment," Sydney answered.

Broots winced, as though fearful of Sydney's next words.

"In fact, I frequently correspond my dislike for her particular brand of disillusionment and lies to her via her Fan Club."

"You write her hate mail?" Miss Parker asked.

"I prefer to think of it as the stating of an awareness of reality, and the deep and permanent damages that her lies can do."

Lyle frowned. "Syd, there are plenty of romance authors out there whom I am _sure_ you _do not_ write to; you seem to be fixating on this one in particular, and I'm not entirely sure that that can be classed, by any measurement, as a healthy pastime. Perhaps you'd be best off sticking to journals, or gardening."

"You might speak of healthy pastimes, young man," Sydney replied, turning his full attention to him.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lyle asked.

"Oh, I think we both know, very well, what _that_ means," Sydney told him knowingly.

Miss Parker grinned.

Lyle frowned. "Well, I wasn't damaged by _reading_ _romance novels_!" he said hotly, and turned about and walked away.

Miss Parker glanced at Broots shortly, but Broots's attention was on Sydney.

"So that's gotta be one of the strangest things I've heard him say in about a whole week," Broots muttered, but Sydney, too, it seemed, was annoyed, and turned away to leave also, perhaps to argue his point further with Lyle, if he could find him.

Miss Parker leapt out of her seat and left the book on the seat behind her and walked out, following Sydney.


End file.
